You are your sole mate. If you didn’t know this, you’ll quickly figure it out after reading Lauren Mackler’s book, Solemate, Master the Art of Aloneness and Transform Your Life. Solemate is a journey that begins with deconstructing negative ideas of aloneness (many people still think alone means unhappy and unloved) and ends with mastering aloneness, which Mackler says “is about changing your habitual patterns of behavior”. Along the way, if you’re committed, you’ll discover your authentic self, a self that does not expect a mate to complete them.

Mackler’s writing style is clear and quick. Solemate, written for men and women, is one-part memoir, one-part clinical study, one-part self-help. Mackler, a coach and psychotherapist, opens with the beginning - and end - of her “storybook marriage” to a successful German physician: “It was only years later, through my personal development work, that I recognized the underlying problem: we had come together for all the wrong reasons. We had been drawn to each other because of voids within ourselves . . . Click here to read the entire review.